Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Basil Davidovich and Ben Washam are the credited animators in the cartoon best-known for Bugs giving an orange monster a manicure.
Thursday, 4 May 2017
Quick Peter Lorre
A Peter Lorre scientist traps Bugs Bunny inside his scary mansion in Hare-Raising Hare. Here are some stretch in-betweens helping zip along the action.
Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Basil Davidovich and Ben Washam are the credited animators in the cartoon best-known for Bugs giving an orange monster a manicure.
Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Basil Davidovich and Ben Washam are the credited animators in the cartoon best-known for Bugs giving an orange monster a manicure.
Wednesday, 3 May 2017
Another Catastrastroke
Here's one from United Press International that appeared in newspapers starting May 31, 1963. Every time I post one of these columns featuring Durante, I can always hear his voice in the quotes. I imagine you do, too. Dem’s da conditions dat prevail! Hot-cha-cha!
Walls Tumbling Down on Durante
By VERNON SCOTT
By UP-International
When Jimmy Durante returned from a recent personal appearance tour he pulled up in front of his home and discovered a catastrastroke.
His old homestead had been leveled to the ground.
"The only thing still standing was the chimney and the swimmin' pool," the Schnozz cried out, obviously still in shock. "You coulda knocked me over with a ton of feathers."
Sure enough, Jimmy's home for more than 30 years in Beverly Hills, had been demolished as thoroughly as Jimmy destroys pianos. "The first thing I do is look up my wife Marge, and I say to her, 'Marge, what's going on here? I turn my back and look what happens! No house!' And Marge tells me she can explain. But I still don't understand the explanation.”
DURANTE stroked his nose, more from affection than out of contemplation. It seemed to give him strength to continue his story. “Before I left town Marge says we need another bedroom in the house for our baby, Cecelia Alicia, who is now two years old. I says 'OK. Knock down a couple walls and add a bedroom.'
"But she got carried away. With the help of some bulldozers my little Marge knocked down every wall in the jernt. She tells me it was impossible to extend to the back door without knocking down the back of the house.
"So I says, 'Why didn't you extend to the front?' And she says, " 'We couldn't extend to the front without knocking down the whole front of the house.'
“It looks like they compromised and pulled down everything just to be sure there was enough space to add another room. "Maybe it's a good thing they tore down the house," Durante sighed.
"After all it was only a three-bedroom place. For a home in Beverly Hills that looks very bad. To tell the truth, I used to hear my neighbors grumble about having a house like that in such a nice community.
"And anyhow, Marge tells me it costs almost as much to repair a house as to build a new one. That's a fact."
The Durante swimming pool will remain intact and unused.
"I never swam in it before, and I ain't gonna swim in it now," he declared. "It's just to look at for prestige. Beverly Hills, you know."
How big will the new house be when it is completed? "I hate to tell you this," Jimmy said, hanging his head. "But it's only got three bedrooms. If you ask me, it's another catastrastroke!"
Tuesday, 2 May 2017
Take That, Walt
There isn’t a moment more satisfying in an MGM cartoon than Screwy Squirrel beating up that symbol of Walt Disney cuteness, Sammy Squirrel, in Screwball Squirrel.
Here are some shots of Sammy being oh-so-coy, grabbing his tail and twirling around on it.
“Oh, brother! Not that. Not that!!” Screwy says, summing up the feeling of Tex Avery fans everywhere.
Screwy takes care of things.
Claude Smith, ex-Disney, designed Sammy. All the animators on this cartoon—Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams—spent time at Disney as well.
Here are some shots of Sammy being oh-so-coy, grabbing his tail and twirling around on it.
“Oh, brother! Not that. Not that!!” Screwy says, summing up the feeling of Tex Avery fans everywhere.
Screwy takes care of things.
Claude Smith, ex-Disney, designed Sammy. All the animators on this cartoon—Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams—spent time at Disney as well.
Monday, 1 May 2017
Rubber Hose Ostrich
The Ub Iwerks cartoon Jungle Jitters (1934) is, I presume, set in Africa, even though the girl in the short looks like a South Seas islander and does the hula to Willie Whopper’s ukulele accompaniment.
An ostrich (native to Africa and not the South Seas, I believe) shows up in one scene to dance to the hula music. Apparently, the bird is naked as (s)he covers up in embarrassment. Twice. Just in case we didn’t get the gag the first time.
We’re still into the rubber hose phase of animation here.
Bob Stokes and Norm Blackburn are the credited animators. Carl Stalling wrote the score.
An ostrich (native to Africa and not the South Seas, I believe) shows up in one scene to dance to the hula music. Apparently, the bird is naked as (s)he covers up in embarrassment. Twice. Just in case we didn’t get the gag the first time.
We’re still into the rubber hose phase of animation here.
Bob Stokes and Norm Blackburn are the credited animators. Carl Stalling wrote the score.
Sunday, 30 April 2017
The Jack Benny BT Interview
Jack Benny gave a lengthy, wide-ranging interview to Broadcasting • Telecasting magazine that was published on October 15, 1956, discussing how and why he entered radio and television, writing his show, and his sponsorship and network changes.
Some of the answers seem a little unusual. Benny quit General Foods for American Tobacco solely because he wanted to plug a different product? Going back to when it happened, the trade press reported he wasn’t altogether happy with General Foods. And he completely ignores his sponsorship by Chevrolet. Benny expert Graeme Cree points out this wasn’t the only time he snubbed the carmaker in later years and believes it was intentional. If you don’t know, against the wishes of many Chevy dealers, the company’s president dumped the Benny show because he wanted a musical programme instead.
Note in 1948 how Benny (rather MCA) shrewdly sold CBS the Jack Benny radio show, not Benny and his characters. In a few years, Benny was free to negotiate another deal strictly for television under a different production company, maintaining all the characters of his radio show. Think of how, years later, David Letterman left NBC for CBS but NBC retained the rights to Larry ‘Bud’ Melman.
STARS SHINE BEST WHEN POLISHED
NO PERFORMER in broadcasting has kept at or near the top as consistently or long as Jack Benny. Here, in this recorded interview with B*T's Associate Editor Larry Christopher, Mr. Benny explains how he has kept his star shining for nearly 25 years.
Q: Jack, since you have sustained about the longest run on radio and television of a single personality during the past quarter of a century, your impressions are of special significance to the broadcasting profession at this time. For instance, how did you happen to decide to leave radio and devote full time to television?
A: I didn't have to decide. Television decided that for you. Tv and sponsors. There's no such a thing as making a decision there. You go where you have to go.
Q: The decision is not up to the entertainer?
A: No. Not at all. I don't care how good your radio program is at the moment, if you have to make a transition to television and if you don't make a good one, it certainly isn't good for the star.
Q: What are the problems for the star in making the transition?
A: Some people might be very, very good in radio and not make it in television because maybe before radio they haven't had real show business experience. On the stage. You see, television brings you back on the stage. I fortunately have had many, many years of experience on the stage, including vaudeville. Now, on the stage I used to do practically what Ed Sullivan does today except he goes for it pretty straight and I go for comedy. If I had started years ago and done that type of show, that would have been the type of show I would be doing today. Now that would have been easy for me to do — a weekly show as an m.c. As long as I knew the acts that were coming in I could prepare for it and also do some work with them. Outside of that, on my first year I sort of had to feel my way around and it seemed that the oftener I did them the better the shows were because I got into the groove like I did on radio.
Q: You're on your seventh year in tv on CBS-TV and with greater frequency than before, are you not?
A: For the last three years it's been every other week. Before that, once a month. Before that, once every six weeks. Before that, six a year and before that four a year. The fewer you do the tougher they are.
Q: The frequency keeps you sharper?
A: Not only keeps you sharper but you don't feel the responsibility that you have when you only go on four times.
Q: Did you feel a more significant responsibility?
A: Yes. If you only go on four times then every show has to be a knockout. This way, the way I go on now, if every show isn't great it doesn't make that much difference. I try to keep them great. Or let me say, I try to keep them from being lousy!
Q: Do you feel television is draining on your creative capacity much more than radio, the movies or vaudeville did?
A: I think it's a big drain on people. I must say fortunately it's been a little easier for me because of the build-up of the characterization over a period of years. This gives the writers something to hang on to. So that even though every program is different, it has something to do with my character and it isn't quite as tough to write. By that I mean you don't have to start off and say "let's write a show" like you do with some comedians who are fine and great comedians but haven't established characterizations. So when you start to write for them, you have to write a great show from the start that maybe has nothing to do with the fellow's character particularly.
Q: The impact of radio reaching such a mass audience, and later television adding its visual impact, these have been a vital factor in establishing this characterization, have they not?
Of course. It's the whole thing.
Q. You mentioned Ed Sullivan. Didn't you make your first radio appearance on his NBC show in 1932?
A. Yes, that's right. That's where they first heard me.
Q: How did it happen?
A: I had known Ed Sullivan for a long time and he asked me to be a guest on his radio show. At that time I was doing shows in New York in vaudeville. Vaudeville was beginning to die.
Q: Did you make a free appearance or for pay?
A: I don't recall. But the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and called me and gave me a job. We went on then for 39 weeks.
Q: What was your first reaction to this new medium after so many years on the stage?
A; Well, the reaction was a little bit frightening because in vaudeville you had one show and that was it. You changed it whenever you felt like it. And in this, when you realized that every week you needed a new show, this got a little bit frightening. But you storm through it some way because everybody is in that same spot.
Q: As a talent personality, what was it like to find yourself looking to a sponsor instead of a box office? Did you meet the Canada Dry people?
A: Oh sure. But I don't recall our first meeting. All I recall is leaving the stage show. You see, I was always looking ahead for something. Sometimes I left good jobs. I didn't have much money in those days. I was making good money, but I used to spend it all. But I always looked ahead. And I said, "If this is the new medium, then I must get into it." So I left the stage show, Earl Carroll's Vanities. I asked for my release from a show for which I was getting $1,500 a week. This was a lot of money in those days. And I left to try and get into radio. I didn't even have a job. I turned down $1,500 a week and didn't have a job. My wife agreed with me that I was doing the right thing. As a matter of fact, she sort of encouraged it. She said if it's the thing to do to get into radio, then get into it. Don't worry, she said, they'll find you someplace.
Q: Was radio inevitable in your mind?
A: There is probably no doubt even had I finished the season I would have gotten into radio sometime. But I realized while I was with the show that names we had never heard of before had become more popular around the country than we who had been in show business all of our lives. Some of these people had no background of show business. It was just the fact they were hitting the whole country all at once. So I thought, well, if these people are in it without any great backgrounds and have a bigger reputation than any of us around the country who have worked in show business all of our lives, this is the business to get into . . . And the only reason I got a release from the Vanities is because they were going back to the small cities after leaving New York and Earl Carroll at that time probably was very happy to lose me at $1,500.
Q: Who were some of the people who helped you develop your early radio shows?
A: The first writer I had was a fellow called Harry Conn. A very, very good writer. I had one writer only.
Q: Was Harry Conn responsible for developing some of your original characteristics so well known as your program personality?
A: Well, I would say this. That a writer falls into your characterizations because even in vaudeville I had some of these traits. But they were developed more in radio.
Q: You are known as the man who made a success of integrating the commercial into the format.
A: That's right. Well, I'll tell you a story about that. The first few weeks that we did it in a satirical way on the Canada Dry show the sponsor didn't like it and wanted us to stop it.
Q: Was that the nickel back on the bottle gag?
A: That's right. We did a lot of satires on the commercials.
Q: What was the first notice of the sponsor not liking it?
A: The sponsor wanted us to go back to the straight commercial, but the agency liked it and the agency said "they haven't had time to prove whether this is a good way to do it." So they allowed us another two or three weeks. And in the next two or three weeks the mail kept coming in so much to the sponsor that they liked this kind of advertising that they finally let us alone and let us do it. That is the only way that I would ever do it. Unless I had certain shows where it can't be integrated.
Q: With radio's impact on this new mass audience, you also soon learned you could develop star personalities quickly, new names like your wife Mary, singers Frank Parker, Kenny Baker, Dennis Day, Rochester and Schlepperman and Mr. Kitzel.
A: That's right. They had to have a certain amount of talent right away. They had no chance to develop it any place.
Q: The medium gave them the opportunity . . .
A: Yes, but the medium didn't give them the opportunity to improve themselves. Not like vaudeville where they would play certain towns, if they were bad in one town that was the only town that would know it and then they could go on to another town and improve. You know, I could have been bad in South Bend or Lafayette and by the time I got to Chicago a few weeks later I might have been a little bit better. But on radio, everybody had to be good right away and it's even more so on television.
Q: You had an experience of that in television last year when Leigh Snowden walked across the stage in San Diego.
A: She just walked across the stage. We've had some people who have been developed, but then most of them have to have some talent themselves. There's no question, you can't develop an untalented person. You might develop them for about 10 minutes, but I don't think that you can do anything with them if they haven't got talent.
Q: What do you do to help sustain talent and creative capacity? The demand is tremendous, isn't it?
A: We don't do anything. We just go along as we are. We make no effort to try to be exceptionally good and we don't try to make an effort to top any former show. We try to be good. If we had a great show last week, that doesn't mean that the next one we have to knock our brains out. As a result, the next one can be better because we haven't done that. We never did that on radio. Oh, sometimes I do a show with the Ronald Colmans. People say, "are you going to top it?" Well, I say, we're not even going to try. We just have a show. You may like this one without the Colmans better this particular week.
Q: You can't please everyone all the time.
A: That's right. And people aren't interested in that as much as whether they like you and your cast as personalities.
Q: The feeling of friendship and identification?
A: Absolutely. We always try to have good shows, but we don't knock ourselves out.
Q: One thing that has always distinguished your program in radio and now tv is the precision-like attitude given to each detail in its planning and follow through.
A: Editing. I think editing is the most important thing in all show business. I think editing is the most important thing in anything you do, whether you're making a speech, in politics, I don't care where you are. There isn't a first show that we write that would be good enough to go on. Editing is the most important thing that we do.
Q: After editing, what factors do you consider most important?
A: Well before editing there is something even before editing. Having good, likeable people, good personalities that the audience likes. There are these things. Then, after you get them, good writers, I'm saying after you get all this together, then comes editing.
Q: You stick pretty close to script after this final editing, don't you?
A: We take advantage of the situation for ad libs, but I don't think ad lib comedy is nearly as good as what you write. I would much prefer to get a laugh on what I've worked on all week and what I've paid a lot of money for than to get a laugh on something I might say in the middle of a program when something happens. However, if something happens in the middle of a program, then I think you should take advantage of it. When you've paid for it you don't want to drop it. I'd like to see some show go on and not write anything and ad lib it and see how far they would get. I don't think Will Rogers could have done that, or Mayor Walker, who was probably the greatest ad lib speaker in the world.
Q: Another aspect of this, touching on your current tv show, you do both live and film programs. Do you have a preference?
A: I like doing live shows. I like the intimacy of a live show, but it all depends on what type of a show it is. I'm getting a little more intimacy in the films now that I've made a few. At first it was a bit difficult.
Q: What is your technique of intimacy?
A: I'm talking about walking out and really addressing an audience instead of a camera.
Q: Is that difficult for an entertainer?
A: I think it is. Some people do it very well, like George Burns, who's had this experience for so many years. But of course, when we do a live show we do it a little differently than most of them. We don't have any cameras on the stage at all. Our cameras are in the back of the audience. So when I say intimate, I mean intimate. We're as close to an audience as we can get and they just sit and watch us as though you were watching a play at the Biltmore Theatre.
Q: What are the steps leading up to your show, its conception and planning. For instance, take your kickoff show on CBS-TV for Lucky Strike.
A: We just try and see what would make a good opening show. What's a good idea for an opening show. How would you open a season? I was going to New York after this first show to give a concert at Carnegie Hall for charity October 2. So we figured a good opening would be something that had to do with Carnegie Hall, with my going, with my preparing for it, you see. So we wrote along these lines.
Q: Your writing team has been with you a long time, hasn't it?
A: Sam Perrin and George Balzer have been with me, I think, going on 14 years and Al Gordon and Hal Goldman about eight years. We sit down here in my office in Beverly Hills and we knock off the idea. Some agree and some disagree on some of the different points. When we get to the point where we all agree, then, we discuss the steps of the show. How we should open. They then go away and they write it and then bring it back and we edit it. We go over it very carefully. Next we have our first reading here or at CBS and then I edit it again.
Q: Who is your producer and director.
A: Ralph Levy is director and executive producer and Hillard Marks is producer. We usually rehearse Friday, Saturday and Sunday and do the show Sunday.
Q: Getting back to your early radio show, after the initial 39 weeks for Canada Dry, where did the sponsorship go?
A: It went to General Tire, but just for about six months. It was a summer product. Next we switched to General Foods and six delicious flavors of Jello for many, many years.
Q: By 1940, it seems, the demand for Jello had been so built up by your program that there wasn't enough product to go around and the sponsor was required to put on another product. Isn't that true?
A: I think that finally the last couple of years they switched to Grape Nut Flakes. When we first took over for Jello, the product wasn't selling.
Q: Do you recall when the sponsor first expressed approval at the way radio was moving Jello off the dealer's shelf?
A: It took about the first season for them to realize that the product now was becoming very, very important.
Q: How long did you stay with General Foods?
A: About 10 years. It was in 1944 when I switched to Lucky Strike because I was in the South Pacific in '44 and when I came back I went with them.
Q: Why did you cancel your association with General Foods?
A: I just wanted to switch. I thought I should go with another product.
Q: About 1940-41, you had achieved a very unique thing with respect to your Sunday night 7 p.m. spot on NBC. You became the only personality in radio to control his own time period.
A: That's right. NBC gave me the time and as long as I was staying on it I could have the 7 o'clock period. Any sponsor who got me got that time.
Q: What were the steps leading up to this unique contract with NBC?
A: It came up because I had an opportunity to leave them. No. I'll tell you how it came up. I was going to leave General Foods the year before. That would have been 1940. I intended to leave my present sponsor and go with somebody else and my present sponsor wanted to keep the time whether I left him or not. So NBC came along and said if you will stick with General Foods this time we'll see that you'll always have 7 o'clock Sunday as your time. So I renewed with General Foods.
Q: Did Niles Trammell negotiate this for NBC?
A: Yes. But this was not contractual. This was merely a letter.
Q: When you dropped General Foods, how did you happen to sign with American Tobacco Co.?
SO, ON TO LUCKY STRIKE
A: There were five different companies that went after whatever deal we wanted. I don't recall at this time. The two of them we were trying to decide on were Campbell Soup Co. and American Tobacco and I finally picked Lucky Strike because of a man in the agency that I happened to know who represented Lucky Strike at that time, he sort of brought me over that way.
Q: Who was this person?
A: Don Stauffer.
Q: That was Sullivan, Stauffer, Colwell & Bayles then?
A: I believe so.
Q: Did you think this personal relationship was important for the best development of the show?
A: Well, I felt that I had one person whom I knew to work with should there be any problems. Because I used to hear at that time that the president of American Tobacco who was George Washington Hill was tough to work for. But we didn't find him that way at all. He was simply wonderful.
Q: Do you remember your first meeting with George Washington Hill?
A: Yes. I didn't meet him until about four months after I was working for him.
Q: Where was this?
A: I had lunch with him at his office. And he said a very, very wonderful thing to me. A very funny thing, let me put it that way. He knew he had a reputation for being tough, so as we sat down to have lunch he told me how much he enjoyed my programs. So I thanked him and told him that we always try to have good shows and that we were very fortunate on his show so far of having them pretty nearly all good, but sometimes we're not that lucky. He says to me, "Well, Mr. Benny, I only know one thing. Had your shows been bad, they never would have blamed you. They would say 'there's that so-and-so George Washington Hill to blame for that'."
Q: In later years you moved over to CBS and were one of the first to work out the capital gains arrangement so familiar throughout show business today. Like Amos 'n' Andy, the talent property became a business property, did it not?
A: That wasn't my case. My case was that I had a company and more than just my own show. We started on CBS Radio network Jan. 4, 1949. My company was Amusement Enterprises Inc. This is the company I sold. I didn't sell Jack Benny. I was just a stockholder in the company.
Q: The company itself packaged the programs and handled all the details of your activities?
A: That's right.
Q: I think this was one of the original capital gains arrangements in our profession. Wasn't the original case with General Eisenbook, which set the precedent after World War II, and then came Amos 'n' Andy?
A: Well, you see, Amos 'n' Andy had a legitimate deal because they themselves do not appear on any of their shows, so they have something all separate.
Q: They were selling the characterizations and you were selling a company?
A: I was selling a company with other shows. Like Let's Talk Hollywood. We had a movie, too. Whatever it was, the first year we had a profit-making company.
Q: What was perhaps the most influential factors in your decision to move from NBC to CBS?
A: To make some money like everybody else would like to make. That was the only reason. I was very happy at NBC. The deal was offered to NBC first. This was strictly a business deal for me to make some money. There is no way for an actor to make some money by getting a salary. If he depends on a salary, no matter how much he makes, he's going to go broke eventually. I wouldn't care if I worked for ABC, CBS, NBC or the American Trucking Co. if there was a chance for show business to make some money.
Q: The salary concept, then, has not been satisfactory . . .
A: . . . Oh, as far as earning, as far as salary was concerned, nobody could make any more money than I did. But suppose right now I make a half million dollars a week, let's go that broad; suppose I was given a half million dollars a week, but it was salary. What could I get out of it? About five dollars.
Q: While you were with NBC, I assume you got to know others in the NBC-RCA organization in addition to Niles Trammell. For instance, Gen. David Sarnoff?
A. Never met him until after I went to CBS.
Q. What was the occasion of your meeting General Sarnoff after you switched to CBS, do you recall?
A. Not at all.
Q: Had you met Bill Paley before you went to CBS?
A: Oh yes. I had known Bill Paley for some time. Bill Paley and I were friends without even discussing my ever moving to CBS.
Q: Had you known Dr. Frank Stanton previously?
A: No. Frank Stanton I only knew after I moved there. But Paley I'd seen a lot of at parties in New York. He might have said once, "I'd like to have you with us," and that would be the end of that.
Q: Your present contract with American Tobacco Co., is it coming up for renewal soon?
A: It's a yearly contract.
Q: Your characterization and comedy format through the years, Jack, have been unusually distinctive. Take Fred Allen, for example, your approach was different. Oh, I'm reminded of your big "fight" with Fred Allen. Didn't that start in 1936?
A: Something like that. It was an accident.
Q: Did you see immediate public reaction to this interplay?
A: No. As a matter of fact, we did it just as a gag between ourselves. It didn't start out to be a feud at all. It just started out with Fred Allen saying something which I picked up the next week and then he picked it up the next week and so on. The first thing we knew we had it. Of course, I've always said that if Fred Allen and I ever had gotten together and said "let's have a feud" it probably wouldn't have lasted a month as it would have been contrived. Imagine what Fred Allen, God rest his soul, would have said about my appearance at Carnegie Hall Oct. 2. If he knows anything about it now, he is talking plenty. Say, that would have been a good line to use at Carnegie Hall, wouldn't it?
Q: What, perhaps, was different about your approach to the transition from radio to television. Fred Allen never made the change. I think that's one of the saddest stories in show business, that a man of such great genius . . .
A: . . . Well, Steve Allen describes this very, very well in his book. That Fred Allen was one of the greatest writing and creative comedians in the business. He was a fine comedian, a great writer. Probably better than an acting comedian, you know. And so, therefore, it might have been difficult for him to find the right thing to do. But, sometimes, even he could have found it accidentally. He might have something right away that would have been great for television. Right away. But he just didn't happen to do it. But by the same reason he didn't, he also could have. He just didn't get into the right thing.
Q: Many of the other old timers in radio made the switch to tv and have had their problems. Eddie Cantor began a syndicated series for Ziv but had to give it up. He makes occasional appearances now.
A: Well, I think in Cantor's case his illness took a big toll there. You know, he had this bad heart attack a few years ago and then an operation before that. It's very tough to think and be able to be successful when you have these other worries on your mind. You're told not to do this and I imagine this would have quite an affect on anybody. A lot of his humor was physical too. Lots of jumping. No question he is a fine comedian.
Q: What about Danny Kaye's approach?
A: Well, he doesn't need anything. He doesn't need radio or television. His pictures, his personal appearances or wherever he goes, he does very big. He's a stylized kind of comedian who is excellent in what he does. He doesn't need any other facets of show business in order to stay one of the top comedians. Now, Bob Hope fits into everything.
Q: That takes considerable versatility.
A: Right. And energy. And he's got that. Besides, he's got a terrific personality and he's not only got a great wit but a great warmth in his personality. He finds time to do nice things for others. All together he's damn well liked. It's almost impossible for Bob to do the wrong thing. And if he does do any thing wrong, he's forgiven almost immediately.
Q: Your good friend George Burns has certainly found a successful home in tv.
A: True. And George Burns is a very, very creative comedian. He does what I do in the fact that he's always got his hand in everything. He's got his hand in it from the time they start on the show.
Q: This close attention is very necessary, isn't it?
A: I think very few comedians or stars can be successful and not be a part of the whole organization working to make it a success. Only in the movies can this happen.
Q: In the final analysis, the comedian has to deliver the entertainment product.
A: That's right. He either lives or dies with it.
Some of the answers seem a little unusual. Benny quit General Foods for American Tobacco solely because he wanted to plug a different product? Going back to when it happened, the trade press reported he wasn’t altogether happy with General Foods. And he completely ignores his sponsorship by Chevrolet. Benny expert Graeme Cree points out this wasn’t the only time he snubbed the carmaker in later years and believes it was intentional. If you don’t know, against the wishes of many Chevy dealers, the company’s president dumped the Benny show because he wanted a musical programme instead.
Note in 1948 how Benny (rather MCA) shrewdly sold CBS the Jack Benny radio show, not Benny and his characters. In a few years, Benny was free to negotiate another deal strictly for television under a different production company, maintaining all the characters of his radio show. Think of how, years later, David Letterman left NBC for CBS but NBC retained the rights to Larry ‘Bud’ Melman.
STARS SHINE BEST WHEN POLISHED
NO PERFORMER in broadcasting has kept at or near the top as consistently or long as Jack Benny. Here, in this recorded interview with B*T's Associate Editor Larry Christopher, Mr. Benny explains how he has kept his star shining for nearly 25 years.
Q: Jack, since you have sustained about the longest run on radio and television of a single personality during the past quarter of a century, your impressions are of special significance to the broadcasting profession at this time. For instance, how did you happen to decide to leave radio and devote full time to television?
A: I didn't have to decide. Television decided that for you. Tv and sponsors. There's no such a thing as making a decision there. You go where you have to go.
Q: The decision is not up to the entertainer?
A: No. Not at all. I don't care how good your radio program is at the moment, if you have to make a transition to television and if you don't make a good one, it certainly isn't good for the star.
Q: What are the problems for the star in making the transition?
A: Some people might be very, very good in radio and not make it in television because maybe before radio they haven't had real show business experience. On the stage. You see, television brings you back on the stage. I fortunately have had many, many years of experience on the stage, including vaudeville. Now, on the stage I used to do practically what Ed Sullivan does today except he goes for it pretty straight and I go for comedy. If I had started years ago and done that type of show, that would have been the type of show I would be doing today. Now that would have been easy for me to do — a weekly show as an m.c. As long as I knew the acts that were coming in I could prepare for it and also do some work with them. Outside of that, on my first year I sort of had to feel my way around and it seemed that the oftener I did them the better the shows were because I got into the groove like I did on radio.
A: For the last three years it's been every other week. Before that, once a month. Before that, once every six weeks. Before that, six a year and before that four a year. The fewer you do the tougher they are.
Q: The frequency keeps you sharper?
A: Not only keeps you sharper but you don't feel the responsibility that you have when you only go on four times.
Q: Did you feel a more significant responsibility?
A: Yes. If you only go on four times then every show has to be a knockout. This way, the way I go on now, if every show isn't great it doesn't make that much difference. I try to keep them great. Or let me say, I try to keep them from being lousy!
Q: Do you feel television is draining on your creative capacity much more than radio, the movies or vaudeville did?
A: I think it's a big drain on people. I must say fortunately it's been a little easier for me because of the build-up of the characterization over a period of years. This gives the writers something to hang on to. So that even though every program is different, it has something to do with my character and it isn't quite as tough to write. By that I mean you don't have to start off and say "let's write a show" like you do with some comedians who are fine and great comedians but haven't established characterizations. So when you start to write for them, you have to write a great show from the start that maybe has nothing to do with the fellow's character particularly.
Q: The impact of radio reaching such a mass audience, and later television adding its visual impact, these have been a vital factor in establishing this characterization, have they not?
Of course. It's the whole thing.
Q. You mentioned Ed Sullivan. Didn't you make your first radio appearance on his NBC show in 1932?
A. Yes, that's right. That's where they first heard me.
Q: How did it happen?
A: I had known Ed Sullivan for a long time and he asked me to be a guest on his radio show. At that time I was doing shows in New York in vaudeville. Vaudeville was beginning to die.
Q: Did you make a free appearance or for pay?
A: I don't recall. But the agency for Canada Dry ginger ale heard me and called me and gave me a job. We went on then for 39 weeks.
Q: What was your first reaction to this new medium after so many years on the stage?
A; Well, the reaction was a little bit frightening because in vaudeville you had one show and that was it. You changed it whenever you felt like it. And in this, when you realized that every week you needed a new show, this got a little bit frightening. But you storm through it some way because everybody is in that same spot.
Q: As a talent personality, what was it like to find yourself looking to a sponsor instead of a box office? Did you meet the Canada Dry people?
A: Oh sure. But I don't recall our first meeting. All I recall is leaving the stage show. You see, I was always looking ahead for something. Sometimes I left good jobs. I didn't have much money in those days. I was making good money, but I used to spend it all. But I always looked ahead. And I said, "If this is the new medium, then I must get into it." So I left the stage show, Earl Carroll's Vanities. I asked for my release from a show for which I was getting $1,500 a week. This was a lot of money in those days. And I left to try and get into radio. I didn't even have a job. I turned down $1,500 a week and didn't have a job. My wife agreed with me that I was doing the right thing. As a matter of fact, she sort of encouraged it. She said if it's the thing to do to get into radio, then get into it. Don't worry, she said, they'll find you someplace.
Q: Was radio inevitable in your mind?
A: There is probably no doubt even had I finished the season I would have gotten into radio sometime. But I realized while I was with the show that names we had never heard of before had become more popular around the country than we who had been in show business all of our lives. Some of these people had no background of show business. It was just the fact they were hitting the whole country all at once. So I thought, well, if these people are in it without any great backgrounds and have a bigger reputation than any of us around the country who have worked in show business all of our lives, this is the business to get into . . . And the only reason I got a release from the Vanities is because they were going back to the small cities after leaving New York and Earl Carroll at that time probably was very happy to lose me at $1,500.
Q: Who were some of the people who helped you develop your early radio shows?
A: The first writer I had was a fellow called Harry Conn. A very, very good writer. I had one writer only.
Q: Was Harry Conn responsible for developing some of your original characteristics so well known as your program personality?
A: Well, I would say this. That a writer falls into your characterizations because even in vaudeville I had some of these traits. But they were developed more in radio.
Q: You are known as the man who made a success of integrating the commercial into the format.
A: That's right. Well, I'll tell you a story about that. The first few weeks that we did it in a satirical way on the Canada Dry show the sponsor didn't like it and wanted us to stop it.
Q: Was that the nickel back on the bottle gag?
A: That's right. We did a lot of satires on the commercials.
Q: What was the first notice of the sponsor not liking it?
A: The sponsor wanted us to go back to the straight commercial, but the agency liked it and the agency said "they haven't had time to prove whether this is a good way to do it." So they allowed us another two or three weeks. And in the next two or three weeks the mail kept coming in so much to the sponsor that they liked this kind of advertising that they finally let us alone and let us do it. That is the only way that I would ever do it. Unless I had certain shows where it can't be integrated.
Q: With radio's impact on this new mass audience, you also soon learned you could develop star personalities quickly, new names like your wife Mary, singers Frank Parker, Kenny Baker, Dennis Day, Rochester and Schlepperman and Mr. Kitzel.
A: That's right. They had to have a certain amount of talent right away. They had no chance to develop it any place.
Q: The medium gave them the opportunity . . .
A: Yes, but the medium didn't give them the opportunity to improve themselves. Not like vaudeville where they would play certain towns, if they were bad in one town that was the only town that would know it and then they could go on to another town and improve. You know, I could have been bad in South Bend or Lafayette and by the time I got to Chicago a few weeks later I might have been a little bit better. But on radio, everybody had to be good right away and it's even more so on television.
Q: You had an experience of that in television last year when Leigh Snowden walked across the stage in San Diego.
A: She just walked across the stage. We've had some people who have been developed, but then most of them have to have some talent themselves. There's no question, you can't develop an untalented person. You might develop them for about 10 minutes, but I don't think that you can do anything with them if they haven't got talent.
Q: What do you do to help sustain talent and creative capacity? The demand is tremendous, isn't it?
A: We don't do anything. We just go along as we are. We make no effort to try to be exceptionally good and we don't try to make an effort to top any former show. We try to be good. If we had a great show last week, that doesn't mean that the next one we have to knock our brains out. As a result, the next one can be better because we haven't done that. We never did that on radio. Oh, sometimes I do a show with the Ronald Colmans. People say, "are you going to top it?" Well, I say, we're not even going to try. We just have a show. You may like this one without the Colmans better this particular week.
Q: You can't please everyone all the time.
A: That's right. And people aren't interested in that as much as whether they like you and your cast as personalities.
Q: The feeling of friendship and identification?
A: Absolutely. We always try to have good shows, but we don't knock ourselves out.
A: Editing. I think editing is the most important thing in all show business. I think editing is the most important thing in anything you do, whether you're making a speech, in politics, I don't care where you are. There isn't a first show that we write that would be good enough to go on. Editing is the most important thing that we do.
Q: After editing, what factors do you consider most important?
A: Well before editing there is something even before editing. Having good, likeable people, good personalities that the audience likes. There are these things. Then, after you get them, good writers, I'm saying after you get all this together, then comes editing.
Q: You stick pretty close to script after this final editing, don't you?
A: We take advantage of the situation for ad libs, but I don't think ad lib comedy is nearly as good as what you write. I would much prefer to get a laugh on what I've worked on all week and what I've paid a lot of money for than to get a laugh on something I might say in the middle of a program when something happens. However, if something happens in the middle of a program, then I think you should take advantage of it. When you've paid for it you don't want to drop it. I'd like to see some show go on and not write anything and ad lib it and see how far they would get. I don't think Will Rogers could have done that, or Mayor Walker, who was probably the greatest ad lib speaker in the world.
Q: Another aspect of this, touching on your current tv show, you do both live and film programs. Do you have a preference?
A: I like doing live shows. I like the intimacy of a live show, but it all depends on what type of a show it is. I'm getting a little more intimacy in the films now that I've made a few. At first it was a bit difficult.
Q: What is your technique of intimacy?
A: I'm talking about walking out and really addressing an audience instead of a camera.
Q: Is that difficult for an entertainer?
A: I think it is. Some people do it very well, like George Burns, who's had this experience for so many years. But of course, when we do a live show we do it a little differently than most of them. We don't have any cameras on the stage at all. Our cameras are in the back of the audience. So when I say intimate, I mean intimate. We're as close to an audience as we can get and they just sit and watch us as though you were watching a play at the Biltmore Theatre.
Q: What are the steps leading up to your show, its conception and planning. For instance, take your kickoff show on CBS-TV for Lucky Strike.
A: We just try and see what would make a good opening show. What's a good idea for an opening show. How would you open a season? I was going to New York after this first show to give a concert at Carnegie Hall for charity October 2. So we figured a good opening would be something that had to do with Carnegie Hall, with my going, with my preparing for it, you see. So we wrote along these lines.
Q: Your writing team has been with you a long time, hasn't it?
A: Sam Perrin and George Balzer have been with me, I think, going on 14 years and Al Gordon and Hal Goldman about eight years. We sit down here in my office in Beverly Hills and we knock off the idea. Some agree and some disagree on some of the different points. When we get to the point where we all agree, then, we discuss the steps of the show. How we should open. They then go away and they write it and then bring it back and we edit it. We go over it very carefully. Next we have our first reading here or at CBS and then I edit it again.
Q: Who is your producer and director.
A: Ralph Levy is director and executive producer and Hillard Marks is producer. We usually rehearse Friday, Saturday and Sunday and do the show Sunday.
Q: Getting back to your early radio show, after the initial 39 weeks for Canada Dry, where did the sponsorship go?
A: It went to General Tire, but just for about six months. It was a summer product. Next we switched to General Foods and six delicious flavors of Jello for many, many years.
Q: By 1940, it seems, the demand for Jello had been so built up by your program that there wasn't enough product to go around and the sponsor was required to put on another product. Isn't that true?
A: I think that finally the last couple of years they switched to Grape Nut Flakes. When we first took over for Jello, the product wasn't selling.
Q: Do you recall when the sponsor first expressed approval at the way radio was moving Jello off the dealer's shelf?
A: It took about the first season for them to realize that the product now was becoming very, very important.
Q: How long did you stay with General Foods?
A: About 10 years. It was in 1944 when I switched to Lucky Strike because I was in the South Pacific in '44 and when I came back I went with them.
Q: Why did you cancel your association with General Foods?
A: I just wanted to switch. I thought I should go with another product.
Q: About 1940-41, you had achieved a very unique thing with respect to your Sunday night 7 p.m. spot on NBC. You became the only personality in radio to control his own time period.
A: That's right. NBC gave me the time and as long as I was staying on it I could have the 7 o'clock period. Any sponsor who got me got that time.
Q: What were the steps leading up to this unique contract with NBC?
A: It came up because I had an opportunity to leave them. No. I'll tell you how it came up. I was going to leave General Foods the year before. That would have been 1940. I intended to leave my present sponsor and go with somebody else and my present sponsor wanted to keep the time whether I left him or not. So NBC came along and said if you will stick with General Foods this time we'll see that you'll always have 7 o'clock Sunday as your time. So I renewed with General Foods.
Q: Did Niles Trammell negotiate this for NBC?
A: Yes. But this was not contractual. This was merely a letter.
Q: When you dropped General Foods, how did you happen to sign with American Tobacco Co.?
SO, ON TO LUCKY STRIKE
Q: Who was this person?
A: Don Stauffer.
Q: That was Sullivan, Stauffer, Colwell & Bayles then?
A: I believe so.
Q: Did you think this personal relationship was important for the best development of the show?
A: Well, I felt that I had one person whom I knew to work with should there be any problems. Because I used to hear at that time that the president of American Tobacco who was George Washington Hill was tough to work for. But we didn't find him that way at all. He was simply wonderful.
Q: Do you remember your first meeting with George Washington Hill?
A: Yes. I didn't meet him until about four months after I was working for him.
Q: Where was this?
A: I had lunch with him at his office. And he said a very, very wonderful thing to me. A very funny thing, let me put it that way. He knew he had a reputation for being tough, so as we sat down to have lunch he told me how much he enjoyed my programs. So I thanked him and told him that we always try to have good shows and that we were very fortunate on his show so far of having them pretty nearly all good, but sometimes we're not that lucky. He says to me, "Well, Mr. Benny, I only know one thing. Had your shows been bad, they never would have blamed you. They would say 'there's that so-and-so George Washington Hill to blame for that'."
Q: In later years you moved over to CBS and were one of the first to work out the capital gains arrangement so familiar throughout show business today. Like Amos 'n' Andy, the talent property became a business property, did it not?
A: That wasn't my case. My case was that I had a company and more than just my own show. We started on CBS Radio network Jan. 4, 1949. My company was Amusement Enterprises Inc. This is the company I sold. I didn't sell Jack Benny. I was just a stockholder in the company.
Q: The company itself packaged the programs and handled all the details of your activities?
A: That's right.
Q: I think this was one of the original capital gains arrangements in our profession. Wasn't the original case with General Eisenbook, which set the precedent after World War II, and then came Amos 'n' Andy?
A: Well, you see, Amos 'n' Andy had a legitimate deal because they themselves do not appear on any of their shows, so they have something all separate.
Q: They were selling the characterizations and you were selling a company?
A: I was selling a company with other shows. Like Let's Talk Hollywood. We had a movie, too. Whatever it was, the first year we had a profit-making company.
Q: What was perhaps the most influential factors in your decision to move from NBC to CBS?
A: To make some money like everybody else would like to make. That was the only reason. I was very happy at NBC. The deal was offered to NBC first. This was strictly a business deal for me to make some money. There is no way for an actor to make some money by getting a salary. If he depends on a salary, no matter how much he makes, he's going to go broke eventually. I wouldn't care if I worked for ABC, CBS, NBC or the American Trucking Co. if there was a chance for show business to make some money.
Q: The salary concept, then, has not been satisfactory . . .
A: . . . Oh, as far as earning, as far as salary was concerned, nobody could make any more money than I did. But suppose right now I make a half million dollars a week, let's go that broad; suppose I was given a half million dollars a week, but it was salary. What could I get out of it? About five dollars.
Q: While you were with NBC, I assume you got to know others in the NBC-RCA organization in addition to Niles Trammell. For instance, Gen. David Sarnoff?
A. Never met him until after I went to CBS.
Q. What was the occasion of your meeting General Sarnoff after you switched to CBS, do you recall?
A. Not at all.
Q: Had you met Bill Paley before you went to CBS?
A: Oh yes. I had known Bill Paley for some time. Bill Paley and I were friends without even discussing my ever moving to CBS.
Q: Had you known Dr. Frank Stanton previously?
A: No. Frank Stanton I only knew after I moved there. But Paley I'd seen a lot of at parties in New York. He might have said once, "I'd like to have you with us," and that would be the end of that.
Q: Your present contract with American Tobacco Co., is it coming up for renewal soon?
A: It's a yearly contract.
Q: Your characterization and comedy format through the years, Jack, have been unusually distinctive. Take Fred Allen, for example, your approach was different. Oh, I'm reminded of your big "fight" with Fred Allen. Didn't that start in 1936?
A: Something like that. It was an accident.
Q: Did you see immediate public reaction to this interplay?
A: No. As a matter of fact, we did it just as a gag between ourselves. It didn't start out to be a feud at all. It just started out with Fred Allen saying something which I picked up the next week and then he picked it up the next week and so on. The first thing we knew we had it. Of course, I've always said that if Fred Allen and I ever had gotten together and said "let's have a feud" it probably wouldn't have lasted a month as it would have been contrived. Imagine what Fred Allen, God rest his soul, would have said about my appearance at Carnegie Hall Oct. 2. If he knows anything about it now, he is talking plenty. Say, that would have been a good line to use at Carnegie Hall, wouldn't it?
A: . . . Well, Steve Allen describes this very, very well in his book. That Fred Allen was one of the greatest writing and creative comedians in the business. He was a fine comedian, a great writer. Probably better than an acting comedian, you know. And so, therefore, it might have been difficult for him to find the right thing to do. But, sometimes, even he could have found it accidentally. He might have something right away that would have been great for television. Right away. But he just didn't happen to do it. But by the same reason he didn't, he also could have. He just didn't get into the right thing.
Q: Many of the other old timers in radio made the switch to tv and have had their problems. Eddie Cantor began a syndicated series for Ziv but had to give it up. He makes occasional appearances now.
A: Well, I think in Cantor's case his illness took a big toll there. You know, he had this bad heart attack a few years ago and then an operation before that. It's very tough to think and be able to be successful when you have these other worries on your mind. You're told not to do this and I imagine this would have quite an affect on anybody. A lot of his humor was physical too. Lots of jumping. No question he is a fine comedian.
Q: What about Danny Kaye's approach?
A: Well, he doesn't need anything. He doesn't need radio or television. His pictures, his personal appearances or wherever he goes, he does very big. He's a stylized kind of comedian who is excellent in what he does. He doesn't need any other facets of show business in order to stay one of the top comedians. Now, Bob Hope fits into everything.
Q: That takes considerable versatility.
A: Right. And energy. And he's got that. Besides, he's got a terrific personality and he's not only got a great wit but a great warmth in his personality. He finds time to do nice things for others. All together he's damn well liked. It's almost impossible for Bob to do the wrong thing. And if he does do any thing wrong, he's forgiven almost immediately.
Q: Your good friend George Burns has certainly found a successful home in tv.
A: True. And George Burns is a very, very creative comedian. He does what I do in the fact that he's always got his hand in everything. He's got his hand in it from the time they start on the show.
Q: This close attention is very necessary, isn't it?
A: I think very few comedians or stars can be successful and not be a part of the whole organization working to make it a success. Only in the movies can this happen.
Q: In the final analysis, the comedian has to deliver the entertainment product.
A: That's right. He either lives or dies with it.
Saturday, 29 April 2017
UPA Acclaim
So it was that critics fell over themselves to expound on the “realistic art” of Walt Disney and then later the “adultness” of UPA.
The UPA story has been told in many places, the tale of a studio that was deliberately anti-Disney, anti-Warners, anti-funny animal, where graphics were important and, perhaps to some of its artists, the only thing that mattered.
I’m afraid I can take or leave pretty much all of UPA’s theatrical output. Mostly leave. The artists seem to be trying too hard to be different, trying too hard to be droll instead of funny. To be honest, the most enjoyable UPA cartoons I’ve seen are the studio’s TV commercials. They are droll, if not funny, and the drawing style is different without clobbering the viewer over the head about it. Mind you, UPA wasn’t the only studio experimenting with character (and background) design and movement in TV ads at the time.
The New York Herald Tribune published this little primer on the UPA studio on November 23, 1953, skipping its pre-history and starting with the Columbia release contract. It’s not an out-and-out rave but shows its appreciation. As you likely know, the Thurber feature talked about was never made. Columbia didn’t think Thurber was box office enough; the same logic that resulted in Mr. Magoo being plunked into the studio’s eventual Arabian Knights feature. And if Rooty Toot Toot was a “tremendous success with children,” it had nothing do with the story. Children soon showed CBS what they wanted—bargain-basement Terrytoons instead of the coy Boing-Boing Show.
The Animated Cartoon Becomes a Full-Fledged Art
Poe, Thurber Stories Made Into Films
By THOMAS WOOD
HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 22.—Four years ago a group of young animated-cartoon experts banded together for the express purpose of taking their product out of the pictures-for-kids or “cat and mouse” stage. They called their company UPA, for United Productions of America, and in the short time they have been active they have completely revolutionized the animated cartoon.
While their break with tradition was not clean—their first releasing contract called for three “Fox and Crow” cartoons—their initial effort, “Robin Hoodlum,” was so original and mature that it was given an exclusive run in the so-called “art circuit.”
Since then, UPA has ticked off many a cartoon milestone and won a gross of awards here and abroad. In 1950, for instance, three of its nearsighted Mr. Magoo films were selected for exhibitions at Edinburgh.
That same year the company won its first Academy Award for “Gerald McBoing Boing,” a highly imaginative cartoon about a little boy who spoke sound effects rather than words. And last year it received an Oscar nomination for “Rooty Toot Too,” a lusty interpretation of the famous legend of Frankie and Johnny, but was beaten in the award by a “Tom and Jerry” picture.
One example of UPA’s new adventures is a cartoon translation of a contemporary literary classic, Ludwig Bemelmans’ “Madeline” (recently shown in New York). This is the story of twelve little schoolgirls in Paris who do everything in unison like brushing their teeth, smiling at good deeds and frowning at bad ones. They live such identical lives that when one gets appendicitis, the others all want it, too.
This unusual project has been approached with great reverence. Bemelmans’ unique art style has been faithfully followed throughout. Some of the colors have been intensified here and there, perhaps, but the end result is as typically Bemelmans as if the artist-author had animated it himself.
Soon UPA will release two other animated cartoons which also are visual counterparts of famous stories—“The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, and a fable of our time, “The Unicorn in the Garden,” by James Thurber.
The art approach in each instance has been set by the tone of the original. Poe’s story is ghoulish and somber, so the characters and the settings take on some of the atmosphere of a Charles Addams’ drawing. This film has been a labor of love in this respect, for the artists at UPA are extremely fond of Addams’ work, and some day they hope to bring some of his sinister people to the screen.
Light, Gay Fable
As for the Thurber fable, it is light and gay, like his drawings, and the animators have simply assimilated his style. Some minor liberties have been taken with the colors, though, because there is no evidence that Thurber ever worked in anything but black and white. But if he had, the UPA artists feel certain that he would have used colors as sparingly as they have. Similarly, they have applied sloppy washes to the backgrounds on the simple theory that if Thurber had ever attempted to fill in his backgrounds, he’d have been sloppy about it.
UPA is pinning great hopes on its Thurber picture, by the way, because if it is successful, the company hopes to follow it up with a full-length feature based on his famous “Battle of the Sexes.” Some time ago, they took an option on this work but haven’t yet been able to raise the necessary backing, which is estimated at $500,000.
Despite the acclaim which greets its work, UPA has not yet broken down the distributors’ resistance to full-length animated cartoons of a non-“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” character, but the company doesn’t intend to give up trying.
Friday, 28 April 2017
Wile E. Cat
You remember that cartoon where Wile E. Coyote tip-toed from right to left carrying something, giving a knowing side look to the camera before entering his cave?
Oh, wait. This is Wile E. Coyote wearing a Tom costume. Isn’t it?
The cartoon starts with Jerry mouse drinking some kind of potion that makes him as fast as a, um, roadrunner. About the only thing missing in Is There a Doctor in the Mouse (1964) is a pile of purchases from the Acme Company.
We get Warners directors, Warners artists, a Warners writer, Warners sound effects and even Warners voices. We also get a slick-looking cartoon that’s really boring.
Oh, wait. This is Wile E. Coyote wearing a Tom costume. Isn’t it?
The cartoon starts with Jerry mouse drinking some kind of potion that makes him as fast as a, um, roadrunner. About the only thing missing in Is There a Doctor in the Mouse (1964) is a pile of purchases from the Acme Company.
We get Warners directors, Warners artists, a Warners writer, Warners sound effects and even Warners voices. We also get a slick-looking cartoon that’s really boring.
Thursday, 27 April 2017
More Fun Than a Barrel of Skeletons
Mickey Mouse encounters skeletons galore in The Haunted House (1929). In fact, he plays the organ for them as they dance and use bones to play each other like xylophones.
Then he tries to escape. A doorknob turns into a skeleton.
A door hides a Murphy bed containing husband/wife skeletons. Mickey jumps out the upstairs window. He lands into a barrel where the water turns into skeletons.
Mickey shakes his head looking around so quickly, he practically grows a second head. This is an early version of smear animation, it would appear.
Ub Iwerks is the only credited animator.
Then he tries to escape. A doorknob turns into a skeleton.
A door hides a Murphy bed containing husband/wife skeletons. Mickey jumps out the upstairs window. He lands into a barrel where the water turns into skeletons.
Mickey shakes his head looking around so quickly, he practically grows a second head. This is an early version of smear animation, it would appear.
Ub Iwerks is the only credited animator.
Wednesday, 26 April 2017
Children of the Radio
For every Ron Howard, who people watched as a young child and followed his show business career into adulthood, there are a bunch of Muriel Harbaters.
Muriel, for those of you who don’t know, co-starred on the radio show “Jolly Bill and Jane” in the late 1920s and early ‘30s on NBC. She was under 10 when she started. She quit the show in 1935. By 1940 was toiling as an office worker for a wholesale stationery company. The show biz in her blood turned anaemic.
Here’s a neat story from the National Enterprise Association from 1931 talking about the child stars on the radio at the time. Two of the people in the story you’ll likely have heard of; they took their careers into adulthood. After childhood, Rose Marie sang and did impersonations in nightclubs, then landed the role she’ll always be known for on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Walter Tetley may have had the biggest radio career of the lot of the young people listed, with regular roles on The Fred Allen Show, then The Great Gildersleeve, then The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. When television came around, he voiced Sherman in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, and that’s probably how you know him best.
The others in the story below had varying degrees of a post-kid life in entertainment. Jimmy McCallion won bit roles in movies and TV. Conversely, I can’t find a thing about Bobby Jane Allert outside this story; I wonder if the author got the name right. And we hope the story is correct and young Muriel retired to a life of independent wealth from her glamour days with Jolly Bill.
Child Radio Artists Outdo Their Dads as Money Earners; Broadcasting Offers New Field for Talented Baby Stars
By PAUL HARRISON
NEA Service Writer
NEW YORK, Feb. 13. (NEA)—In more ways than one is radio an infant industry. Scores of its artistic little proteges, many of them too young to read their scripts before the microphone, are bringing home bankrolls that make their fathers' salaries look like pin money.
The young idea in the broadcasting business had twisted an old maxim around to "Children should be heard, and not seen"—but the sooner television comes along, the better they'll be satisfied. For talented children are adopting the radio as their own special medium, and another decade or two will find hundreds of highly-paid entertainers who literally have made broadcasting their life work.
Just now, with most of the baby stars, a radio career is pretty much in the nature of a lark. The sights they see in the labyrinthine studios, the rehearsals which are scarcely more than afternoon parties, and the stories and plays in which they take part all are far more exciting than their pay-checks.
As a matter of fact, their salaries are not large in comparison to those of adult performers and, contrary to reports of fabulous amounts and long term agreements, only one young star today is working under contract to a broadcasting company. This is Baby Rose Marie, 7-year-old bundle of hard-boiled precocity, love-crooning, blues-shouting tenement-house daughter of an Italian father and a Polish mother. Their name used to be Mazetta; it's Curley now, and they're managing Rose Marie, teaching her jazz songs and banking something less than $1000 weekly from a vaudeville contract. She has been in the movies, too, and soon will return to the air.
But though many of radio's baby stars are the children of foreign-born parents, few are such unchildlike sophisticates. Winifred Toomey, for instance, an Irish colleen of 10 who has had six years of broadcasting experience. Apparently as simple and unaffected as any youngster of her age, she plays most of the important little-girl parts you hear over the NBC networks. She attends a professional children's school, is a full-fledged actress and earns about $5000 a year.
Winifred has an Irish partner in many of her broadcasts, Jimmy McCallion, 11, who is more of a child of the stage. Jimmy has appeared in several Broadway shows, has had parts in 25 movies, and began his radio career four years ago. He makes a lot more money than Winifred.
Radio Is Play to Him
"Radio is just a lot of fun," said Jimmy seriously. "It's mostly like playing with a bunch of kids at your own house. The movies are just hard work, but I like the stage because I can tell when people like me.
Another highly-paid baby star is Muriel Harbater, who is "Jane" with "Jolly Bill" Steinke on NBC networks every morning. She is the daughter of a plumber in the Bronx who is sticking to his pipes and faucets while Mrs. Harbater manages Muriel and makes sure that her education doesn't suffer. It's a strict routine, rising at 5 o'clock every morning and doing two broadcasts at the studio, but all of her salary is being banked against the time she is of college age and should be independently wealthy.
Miss Madge Tucker, who directs the juvenile activities of the National Broadcasting Company, manages and acts in the widely-known "Lady Next Door" program. Since she deserted the stage for radio six years ago, she has given thousands of children has given thousands of children's auditions and has discovered most of today's youthful entertainers. About 75 of them appear regularly on the programs she supervises.
"And practically every one of them,” she declared, “is the child of hard-working parents who never would dream of exploiting their youngster’s talent. There is some jealousy, of course, but generally we get along better than adult entertainers.
“The children themselves are quicker to learn than most grown-ups. Their charm is in their naturalness for they seldom try to ‘act.’ I treat them like intelligent people because they are. Pure animal spirit sometimes makes them a little unruly at rehearsals but they really take pride in their discipline and almost never show stage-fright.”
Miss Tucker and Miss Nila Mack, director of children’s programs for the Columbia Broadcasting System, both predict that nearly all of their audition discoveries will go far in the entertainment world. There is Walter Campbell Tetley, the “Wee Harry Lauder” of NBC, who was discovered only a year ago and already is appearing regularly in four programs, including “Raising Junior” and Ray Knight’s Cuckoos. Another, Eddie Wragge, (“Shrimp” to you) is 10, tiny and blond, but he already has experience with the Theater Guild.
Howard Merril, at 14, has appeared in scores of movies and plays and is considered one of the best child actors on both Columbia and National Broadcasting programs. Pat Ryan, 10, and Estelle Levy, 8, principals in the “Helen and Mary” broadcast on the Columbia network, both are audition discoveries and come from modest New York homes. Bobby Jane Allert, 4, who has to memorize her script and songs, plays a ukulele almost as big as herself.
When a shabby little Russian girl of 8 walked into the Columbia studio for an audition recently and nearly shattered the microphone with her full-toned blues voice, the orchestra laid down its instruments and applauded. Her name is Ruby Barth, and you’ll be hearing her one of these days.
Their Incomes Vary
Alfred Corn, in NBC’s “Rise of the Goldbergs,” is 14 and gets heaps of fan mail. Laddie Seman [sic] of Norwegian and Dutch parents, has had theatrical experience and seems destined to go far. Donald Hughes, another veteran of 12, has graduated from children’s programs to the very profitable role of Rollo in J.P. McEvoy’s skit on the Columbia network.
But radio's babies have their ups and downs, for only a fortunate few have contracts on commercial programs. Others are "at liberty" for small bits which may last months or only a day. Jimmy McCallion, for instance, until recently appeared in seven different programs on various networks, and made from $15 to $50 weekly with each of them. But some of the broadcasts have been discontinued, and now Jimmy isn't making any more than his papa!
While the field for child talent is growing, program directors say it by no means is keeping up with the host of prodigies whose parents are constantly seeking auditions. Chances are slim indeed for young geniuses of piano or violin, since nothing of their fresh young personalities can be conveyed through the ether. The demand is only for dramatic actors and singers, and not more than one in a hundreds of these is outstanding enough to win a place in broadcasting.
Muriel, for those of you who don’t know, co-starred on the radio show “Jolly Bill and Jane” in the late 1920s and early ‘30s on NBC. She was under 10 when she started. She quit the show in 1935. By 1940 was toiling as an office worker for a wholesale stationery company. The show biz in her blood turned anaemic.
Here’s a neat story from the National Enterprise Association from 1931 talking about the child stars on the radio at the time. Two of the people in the story you’ll likely have heard of; they took their careers into adulthood. After childhood, Rose Marie sang and did impersonations in nightclubs, then landed the role she’ll always be known for on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Walter Tetley may have had the biggest radio career of the lot of the young people listed, with regular roles on The Fred Allen Show, then The Great Gildersleeve, then The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. When television came around, he voiced Sherman in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, and that’s probably how you know him best.
The others in the story below had varying degrees of a post-kid life in entertainment. Jimmy McCallion won bit roles in movies and TV. Conversely, I can’t find a thing about Bobby Jane Allert outside this story; I wonder if the author got the name right. And we hope the story is correct and young Muriel retired to a life of independent wealth from her glamour days with Jolly Bill.
Child Radio Artists Outdo Their Dads as Money Earners; Broadcasting Offers New Field for Talented Baby Stars
By PAUL HARRISON
NEA Service Writer
NEW YORK, Feb. 13. (NEA)—In more ways than one is radio an infant industry. Scores of its artistic little proteges, many of them too young to read their scripts before the microphone, are bringing home bankrolls that make their fathers' salaries look like pin money.
The young idea in the broadcasting business had twisted an old maxim around to "Children should be heard, and not seen"—but the sooner television comes along, the better they'll be satisfied. For talented children are adopting the radio as their own special medium, and another decade or two will find hundreds of highly-paid entertainers who literally have made broadcasting their life work.
Just now, with most of the baby stars, a radio career is pretty much in the nature of a lark. The sights they see in the labyrinthine studios, the rehearsals which are scarcely more than afternoon parties, and the stories and plays in which they take part all are far more exciting than their pay-checks.
As a matter of fact, their salaries are not large in comparison to those of adult performers and, contrary to reports of fabulous amounts and long term agreements, only one young star today is working under contract to a broadcasting company. This is Baby Rose Marie, 7-year-old bundle of hard-boiled precocity, love-crooning, blues-shouting tenement-house daughter of an Italian father and a Polish mother. Their name used to be Mazetta; it's Curley now, and they're managing Rose Marie, teaching her jazz songs and banking something less than $1000 weekly from a vaudeville contract. She has been in the movies, too, and soon will return to the air.
But though many of radio's baby stars are the children of foreign-born parents, few are such unchildlike sophisticates. Winifred Toomey, for instance, an Irish colleen of 10 who has had six years of broadcasting experience. Apparently as simple and unaffected as any youngster of her age, she plays most of the important little-girl parts you hear over the NBC networks. She attends a professional children's school, is a full-fledged actress and earns about $5000 a year.
Winifred has an Irish partner in many of her broadcasts, Jimmy McCallion, 11, who is more of a child of the stage. Jimmy has appeared in several Broadway shows, has had parts in 25 movies, and began his radio career four years ago. He makes a lot more money than Winifred.
Radio Is Play to Him
"Radio is just a lot of fun," said Jimmy seriously. "It's mostly like playing with a bunch of kids at your own house. The movies are just hard work, but I like the stage because I can tell when people like me.
Another highly-paid baby star is Muriel Harbater, who is "Jane" with "Jolly Bill" Steinke on NBC networks every morning. She is the daughter of a plumber in the Bronx who is sticking to his pipes and faucets while Mrs. Harbater manages Muriel and makes sure that her education doesn't suffer. It's a strict routine, rising at 5 o'clock every morning and doing two broadcasts at the studio, but all of her salary is being banked against the time she is of college age and should be independently wealthy.
Miss Madge Tucker, who directs the juvenile activities of the National Broadcasting Company, manages and acts in the widely-known "Lady Next Door" program. Since she deserted the stage for radio six years ago, she has given thousands of children has given thousands of children's auditions and has discovered most of today's youthful entertainers. About 75 of them appear regularly on the programs she supervises.
"And practically every one of them,” she declared, “is the child of hard-working parents who never would dream of exploiting their youngster’s talent. There is some jealousy, of course, but generally we get along better than adult entertainers.
“The children themselves are quicker to learn than most grown-ups. Their charm is in their naturalness for they seldom try to ‘act.’ I treat them like intelligent people because they are. Pure animal spirit sometimes makes them a little unruly at rehearsals but they really take pride in their discipline and almost never show stage-fright.”
Miss Tucker and Miss Nila Mack, director of children’s programs for the Columbia Broadcasting System, both predict that nearly all of their audition discoveries will go far in the entertainment world. There is Walter Campbell Tetley, the “Wee Harry Lauder” of NBC, who was discovered only a year ago and already is appearing regularly in four programs, including “Raising Junior” and Ray Knight’s Cuckoos. Another, Eddie Wragge, (“Shrimp” to you) is 10, tiny and blond, but he already has experience with the Theater Guild.
Howard Merril, at 14, has appeared in scores of movies and plays and is considered one of the best child actors on both Columbia and National Broadcasting programs. Pat Ryan, 10, and Estelle Levy, 8, principals in the “Helen and Mary” broadcast on the Columbia network, both are audition discoveries and come from modest New York homes. Bobby Jane Allert, 4, who has to memorize her script and songs, plays a ukulele almost as big as herself.
When a shabby little Russian girl of 8 walked into the Columbia studio for an audition recently and nearly shattered the microphone with her full-toned blues voice, the orchestra laid down its instruments and applauded. Her name is Ruby Barth, and you’ll be hearing her one of these days.
Their Incomes Vary
Alfred Corn, in NBC’s “Rise of the Goldbergs,” is 14 and gets heaps of fan mail. Laddie Seman [sic] of Norwegian and Dutch parents, has had theatrical experience and seems destined to go far. Donald Hughes, another veteran of 12, has graduated from children’s programs to the very profitable role of Rollo in J.P. McEvoy’s skit on the Columbia network.
But radio's babies have their ups and downs, for only a fortunate few have contracts on commercial programs. Others are "at liberty" for small bits which may last months or only a day. Jimmy McCallion, for instance, until recently appeared in seven different programs on various networks, and made from $15 to $50 weekly with each of them. But some of the broadcasts have been discontinued, and now Jimmy isn't making any more than his papa!
While the field for child talent is growing, program directors say it by no means is keeping up with the host of prodigies whose parents are constantly seeking auditions. Chances are slim indeed for young geniuses of piano or violin, since nothing of their fresh young personalities can be conveyed through the ether. The demand is only for dramatic actors and singers, and not more than one in a hundreds of these is outstanding enough to win a place in broadcasting.
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